Brawner: We're lucky to have laboratories of democracy

By Steve Brawner

Sunday

Jun 10, 2018 at 12:01 AM

States often are described as laboratories of democracy, which is good because our democracy definitely needs some tinkering. These past few weeks, we’ve seen how three states in particular are running their experiments.

On Tuesday, California held its “top two” party primaries. Republicans, Democrats, and all other candidates appeared on the same ballot, and the top two finishers advanced to the general election regardless of party label.

Why do this? Under the traditional primary system, like in Arkansas, voters choose between participating in the Republican and Democratic primaries. Nationwide, these tend to attract low turnouts composed of a disproportionate share of partisan and ideological voters. As a result, the winners tend also to be partisan and ideological, or at least pretend to be.

The consequence has been a Congress composed heavily of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, with a void between them where statesmanlike compromise is supposed to occur. Without a healthy center, Congress gets stuck in gridlock, unable to accomplish even its most basic responsibilities such as passing a budget. The top two voting system theoretically would help remedy this by forcing candidates to appeal to the broader electorate, including voters in the center, assuming there still are some.

In California, the top two finishers in the governor’s race were a Democrat and a Republican in a state where the Democrat likely will win anyway. The top two finishers in the 32-candidate Senate race were both Democrats, one of whom won 11 percent of the vote.

The votes are still being counted because California voters could vote by mail, even if they didn’t vote absentee. Oregon has conducted elections exclusively by mail since 2000, and turnout there is high. Oregon also registers voters automatically through its Office of Motor Vehicles. In the 2016 presidential election, a record number of voters took part, and turnout was almost 79 percent. During this year’s midterms May 15, turnout dropped to 33.6 percent, but the number of voters was higher than it was in 2014 before the automatic voter registration law was passed.

By contrast, in Arkansas turnout in May was less than 19 percent, and that’s with lower voter registration.

Meanwhile, Maine voters June 12 will consider making permanent the ranked choice voting system they initially approved in 2016 until legislators fought it. There, in races featuring more than two candidates, voters will rank their choices. If no candidate receives a majority, then the last place finisher’s votes will be eliminated, and his or her votes will be awarded to their voters’ second choices. That process continues with the next-to-last place candidate and so on, until one candidate has a majority.

Why go to all that trouble? Maine has a lot of multiple-candidate races where the winner is elected with less than half the votes. That’s been the case in nine of the last 11 governor’s races. Ranked choice voting would produce a winner who would be a majority of voters’ first or second choice.

Another benefit of ranked choice voting is that it allows each voter to choose the candidate they really prefer, even if it’s an independent or third party nominee. The current system encourages voters to choose either the Republican or the Democrat, even if they dislike them both and would prefer someone else. Otherwise, they’re withholding their vote from the so-called “lesser of two evils.”

It sounds complicated, but a number of cities already have ranked choice voting, and Arkansas does it that way with its overseas ballots.

Maybe none of these efforts will succeed. Almost any policy change, even a positive one, also produces negative and unforeseen consequences. Maybe the country is so divided culturally that no political reform will work, and gridlock will continue until something weird and nation-changing happens.

But we’re blessed with 50 laboratories for experimentation. Thomas Edison failed many times before he invented the light bulb, and many flying machines through the ages crashed before Orville and Wilbur Wright flew 120 feet in 1903. Less than 66 years later, Americans landed on the moon.

So why even try? The more relevant question is, why not?

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

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